Cali

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A long day travelling into Colombia and after a recovery night in Popayan I spent the next few days in Cali. Didn’t get up to much, just a few nights out (a bit disappointing because it was midweek) and a walk round the city.

I did do a day trip from there to San Cipriano with an Irish guy from the hostel. A couple of hours out from Cali you get the bus driver to drop you by the side of the road and walk down to a little village where you hire a driver and one of these ingenious little contraptions they get around on.

There is no road link to San Cipriano only a railway track and with no regular trains running on it the locals had to come up with a solution. They made these cart things with a bench on them that fit onto the tracks and are powered by a motorbike with its front wheel bolted to the cart and the back wheel on the tracks.

You sit on the bench with the driver astride the bike and rattle along at an alarming pace stopping periodically to lift the whole contraption off the tracks to let another one go past in the opposite direction.

Once you get to San Cipriano you pay a nominal national park fee and take a short walk to a beautiful swimming spot in the jungle which is a nice activity but the day is really all about the journey not the destination.